The second week of school went along smoother than the first.

FitzSimmons had their class schedule from the very beginning of it, and had read through all of their books and several others by that point, so they knew what they were doing going into all of their class. Additionally, they were actually working on spells in most of their classes, making it more interesting and engaging as well. Obviously the proper theoretical base was necessary before they could actually begin casting spells, and FitzSimmons knew that better than anyone else after a combined four PhDs and Shield Academy, but it didn't change the fact that actually using and doing the subject was always more fun than the introductory knowledge necessary to use and do the subject.

Additionally, Ron had quit stalking them quite as much as he had the first week. He tried studying with them in the library two nights, and while he dutifully studied while he was in there with them, he left after only an hour both nights grumbling of how boring it was, and how his time would be much better spent playing wizards chess with Seamus and Dean, two other Gryffindor first year boys. They were also pretty sure that he spent half of his time with them reading books on quidditch, not their classes, but at least he was reading and being semi-studious, so they hadn't called him out on it. He also still sat with them about a third of the meals that they were both at, but the other two-thirds he sat with either the other first years or his older brothers, leaving FitzSimmons alone.

But the biggest change of the second week was that on Thursday afternoon they were to have their first flying lesson, which both of FitzSimmons were excited for from the moment that they read about it on the common room notice board on Tuesday morning. After years of flying in quinjets, the BUS, and various iterations of Zephyr One, and two skydiving trips for Simmons and one for Fitz (he couldn't get the straps on the first time), the prospect of now being able to fly without all of the expertise needed to fly a plane or the single direction of skydiving was exciting.

Thursday morning FitzSimmons were still sitting in the Great Hall when the owl mail arrived, too engrossed in their conversation of combining Simmons' biochem with one of Fitz's engineering pet projects that he had floating around in his head, to have left the Hall yet. Normally they would have been in the library or out in the courtyard doing a little light reading, chatting, or necking before class by that point, but this particular morning they weren't. And so they were there to see Malfoy walk up to the Gryffindor table and steal something from Neville that he had just received in the owl mail. When a quick glance up at the staff table confirmed that the teachers weren't going to do their job of protecting the students' property rights, at least not without a firm kick in the bum, FitzSimmons leapt up and dashed forward to the staff table and Professor McGonagall. If they had to remind the teachers to do their job, or point out where they were needed to do their job, then so be it — they were a shield, after all.

"Malfoy just stole something from Neville," Simmons pronounced authoritatively as they came skidding to a halt in front of their Head of House, pointing back to where Malfoy was still holding whatever it was that he'd stolen from Neville, and Neville was just sitting there submissively instead of punching the bully straight in the face and breaking his nose like the bully deserved.

After just sitting there looking at FitzSimmons strangely for a second, Professor McGonagall finally stood up and walked down to where Neville and Malfoy were, FitzSimmons following along a good ten meters behind her. There was no way that Malfoy and Neville wouldn't figure out that they were the ones who had reported Malfoy's felonious actions, but there was no reason to make sure that the two of them were aware of that while the actual punishment was being handed down by Professor McGonagall. Better to make them think for a little while at least that the authority figures of the castle were actually looking out for the well-being of their charges, and enforcing the school rules and actual laws, before they realized that it was just a couple of students making said authority figure do her job.

When Professor McGonagall made it up to Malfoy and Neville, she said sternly, "What is going on here?"

"Malfoy's got my remembrall, Professor," Neville answered submissively.

"Just looking," Malfoy growled, scowling at getting caught as he haphazardly tossed the glass sphere that he was holding down onto the table before stalking away with Crabbe and Goyle lumbering behind him.

And McGonagall just let him walk away, not even saying a word to him let alone actually punishing him for his crime, before turning and starting back up to the staff table, apparently thinking that she had done something right or useful. FitzSimmons, however, strongly disagreed, and as the ones with actual law enforcement backgrounds — if a bit more global and interplanetary moral law than local written law — they felt compelled to express this to her.

"That's all you're going to do?!" Simmons exclaimed in righteous anger as McGonagall started walking towards them, intentionally not keeping her voice down in the least, wanting as many people as possible to hear this, so that everyone would know just how terrible and criminal McGonagall had acted, just how much she had refused to do her job. "What kind of precedent is that setting for the thieves or victims in your school?! Thieves will continue stealing with impunity if they know they aren't going to be punished, and victims will be much less likely to come forward if they know the supposed authority figures aren't going to do a bloody thing about the crimes committed against them that they are reporting!"

McGonagall stopped and stared at them in shock for being scolded and so bluntly and accurately at that, before snapping, "Ten points and detention tomorrow night, Granger, for talking like that to a professor, and ten more points for still not wearing your robes!", and then brusquely brushing past them and returning to her seat at the staff table.

"And fuck you, too," Fitz muttered under his breath as he and his wife slowly walked out of the Great Hall and out into the courtyard to wait for the bell telling them that it was time to head to their first class of the day, mastering his impulse to punch McGonagall in her wrinkly old hag face like she deserved for not doing her sworn duty of protecting the students entrusted to her. But as they walked out into the courtyard he did grumble on, "So stealing is fine as long as you haphazardly throw it back towards the owner when a professor catches you after another student has to point it out to them, but point out to a professor that not punishing crimes will only encourage more crime and discourage reporting crime, and you get points removed and detention."

"Hey," Simmons said softly, cupping her husband's cheek and leaning up to kiss him softly on the lips. "It's okay. Not ideal, or even good, but it's okay."

"I know, I know," Fitz sighed, dipping back down to kiss her a little more firmly. "I just wish we could report McGonagall to someone, but I'm not sure who would be the authority figure over her to report her to — who it is that's supposed to keep her responsible. Technically it would be Dumbledore, but he was there and did nothing, assuming he heard and saw at least some of what was going on, and the same goes with the rest of the professors. And we have no access to the government to have her arrested for being complicit to robbery or bullying, or for child abuse. Besides the fact I have yet to hear about a magical police force to begin with. Of course, at the end of the day it's the parents of the students here whom she's ultimately accountable to, but there's no way to tell all of them so that they demand she start doing her job or be fired. This place has just been so frustrating in ways we normally don't have to deal with, and we've only been here ten days."

"Promise to make it all worthwhile tonight," Simmons smirked teasingly, resting her hand on his chest.

Fitz closed his hand around hers, squeezing it lightly. "You make it worthwhile pretty much every night, besides simply being next to you every day makes shit a lot worse than this school worthwhile."

"Now don't go be making things all sentimental on me when I'm trying to make a rare joke about sex," Simmons teased back, sticking her tongue out her husband. "But seriously, I love you."

"Love you, too," Fitz replied.

But at that moment their romantic declarations were cut short by the bell ringing, and after one last quick peck to tide them over they headed off to their first class of the day, walking hand in hand.

~FS~

That afternoon FitzSimmons joined the rest of the Gryffindor and Slytherin first years out on the lawn in the warm late-summer sun for flying lessons.

Unfortunately that wasn't going to go as smoothly as they had hoped, as almost immediately Neville fell off of his broom and broke his wrist, requiring Madam Hooch to take him up to the hospital wing with the strong warning to the rest of the class of, "You leave those brooms where they are or you'll be out of Hogwarts before you can say 'quidditch'."

Of course, as soon as she was out of sight Malfoy immediately began flying, trying to tempt Harry Potter into flying with him by insulting Neville and stealing his glass ball yet again before taking it up into the air with him and saying in slightly less blunt terms that he was going to hide it somewhere that Neville would never be able to get it.

Highly tempted, FitzSimmons stretched out on their backs in the warm grass with their hands intertwined on top of Simmons' perky boobs, watching Malfoy fly about in the air and remembering every little thing that he did so that they could report him to Madam Hooch as soon as she returned, and hopefully get the bully kicked out of the school just like she had promised. Not that they actually believed that had a snowball's chance in hell of really occurring, as from what they had heard in their decades of schooling, governmentally required schools like this one were practically never able to kick anyone out unless they had murdered someone important, or something similar to that — just like with graduating at the end of high school, no one was ever allowed to be failed for poor grades. But perhaps Madam Hooch would at least revoke his flying class privileges for a few weeks, or earn him a few detentions — not that they had high hopes that those were particularly punishing, either, but it was what it was, and it was better than him getting away scot-free again like he had that morning with Deputy Headmistress McGonagall.

When Malfoy realized that Harry Potter wasn't chasing him like he'd intended, and was just lying on the ground watching him disinterestedly, Malfoy shouted down at Fitz, "Hey Potter, didn't you hear me?! I'm going to leave that stupid thing Longbottom's gran sent him up here in this tree! So come and get it and save your little crybaby again, Potter, like you did this morning! Yeah, I saw it was you two! Or are you too chicken now that you have to do something yourself? Know you can't fly as good as me!"

Fitz merely waved back at the bully and thief with his free hand, before giving a big, fake yawn. He already had his plan for bringing Malfoy down a peg or ten or out of the school entirely, and it certainly didn't involve doing anything wrong himself — same as that morning when they had gone and reported Malfoy's theft to the proper authorities instead of knocking him out cold themselves, even if said authority did nothing in the end, and had to be reprimanded herself. But for this particular case, with the soon to exist proof of Neville's ball being up in a tree and at least eight students (the other Gryffindors) out of the class of twenty willing to corroborate his and Simmons' story that Malfoy had committed the crime that they were accusing him of, if Madam Hooch refused to enforce the law that theft was illegal, he planned on going around to every professor in the school and reporting Malfoy's crime until either one of them punished Malfoy appropriately, or else committed evidence tampering and removed the key piece of evidence from the tree, at which point they'd kind of have to stop as they could no longer say, 'Go look in the tree, there's a ball there that at least eight other people can corroborate Malfoy put there'.

After several seconds of Fitz still not coming after him, Malfoy shouted again, "I'm serious! I'm going to leave it up here if you don't come stop me!"

This time FitzSimmons didn't react at all, continuing to just watch him, until finally he flew over to the tall oak tree that he had been pointing at and set the ball in a crook where one of the uppermost branches met the trunk. Then he turned his broom around and looked back down at Fitz, who was still just lying there.

"It's up in this tree! Where it's going to stay until someone comes and gets it for the great lump, since we all know he's never going to be able to fly up here and get it himself! He can't even get ten feet off the ground without breaking his wrist!"

This time Simmons did reply, though only to her husband, whispering in Fitz's ear, "I've been thinking about it, and I think Malfoy is jealous of Harry Potter. Malfoy clearly has a lot of pride in himself, but his fame is still small compared to Harry's, and I'm pretty sure he's envious of that, which is why he's so focused on trying to bully Harry. Neville this morning was just an easy target of convenience, that purely by chance is working out fortuitously for him now to get to Harry, but his main focus is Harry himself, since Harry is clearly so much more famous than him."

"Plus I refused to be friends with him after he insulted you slash Hermione on the train," Fitz replied into Simmons' ear. "It didn't seem like he was used to people turning down his offers of friendship, and felt personally insulted by my refusal, and the only way he knew how to handle his emotions was to become my mortal enemy. But also, I think he's just flat out a bully, and likes bullying people. But I'm sure your reason about why he's focused on Harry is also true — even if Harry had become friends with him on the train, Malfoy still would have ended up fighting him out of jealousy."

Meanwhile up in the air, Malfoy had finally accepted that Fitz wasn't going to be coming after him and had begun casually flying back down to the ground, when there was a sudden shout from across the lawn.

"What do you think you're doing up there?! I told you not to fly while I was gone! That's ten points and you're not allowed on a broom for the next two weeks!"

FitzSimmons thought it a rather weak punishment after having originally told them that expulsion would occur if any of them flew, but they had a plan to make his punishment at least a little more reasonable. Well, okay, probably still not more reasonable, but at least a little harsher.

Quickly jumping up and hurrying over to their professor, Simmons said to her before she could resume class and Malfoy had just barely landed, "He also took Neville's present that the boy dropped when he fell and broke his wrist, and stuck it up near the top of that oak tree."

Madam Hooch looked at FitzSimmons in surprise for a second, before looking around at the rest of the class, all the Gryffindors of which were nodding their heads vigorously, while the Slytherins stood around saying nothing very loudly, many of them just staring at their feet, knowing that he had but not about to get one of their own race in trouble.

Madam Hooch looked over at Malfoy, who had landed and walked back up to the rest of the class by that point. "Did you put Neville's belonging in that tree?"

Malfoy shuffled around guiltily for a second, before suddenly exclaiming, "It's Potter's fault!" as he pointed accusingly at Fitz.

FitzSimmons' eyebrows rose slightly, wonder how the hell he planned on spinning this, as Madam Hooch stared down at him clearly not believing him.

"Explain."

"He —" Malfoy began strongly, before suddenly cutting off and just grumbling and muttering incomprehensibly and stalking away to the far side of the students.

Looking around the class again, Madam Hooch said sternly, "Wait here," before grabbing her broom and kicking up into the sky, flying up to the topmost branches of the oak tree. She returned half a minute later, Neville's ball in hand.

"Ten more points, Malfoy," she said sternly, before turning to the rest of the class and saying, "Everyone but Malfoy, resume your positions next to your brooms."

After that the flying lesson went by pleasantly, without Malfoy causing any more trouble or breaking any more laws or school rules. But that evening at supper, he stalked over to FitzSimmons just as they were finishing up their meal.

"Think you're so smart getting me in trouble with Hooch like you did McGonagall, do you? Well, we all know it's just because you're too scared to fight me."

"Maybe — maybe not. Just pray the day never comes when you have to find out," Fitz answered.

"I'll take you on anytime," Malfoy sneered right back, having no clue that he was talking to an actual trained spy, who could pretty easily kill an eleven year old in a real fight. "Tonight, even, if you're not too scared. Wizard's duel — wands only, no contact. Oh, but you've probably never heard of a wizard's duel before, have you?"

"Nope — I haven't," Fitz answered truthfully, and without the slightest hint of embarrassment about the fact, because he wasn't in the slightest bit embarrassed about not knowing something about the magical world, since he hadn't grown up in it. "What's a wizard's duel?"

He was always happy to learn new things, and while Malfoy obviously wasn't going to ever be the most objective source of information, and they could and Simmons probably still would look up what a wizard's duel was in the library later that evening, if they could get the basic principles of it now, that wouldn't go amiss.

Malfoy stared at Fitz in shock for several seconds for admitting that he had no clue what a wizard's duel was, and not trying to pretend that he knew more than he did like Malfoy knew he certainly would have done if there was anything that he didn't already know, but finally he sneered mockingly, "Oh, look, the great Harry Potter doesn't know something."

"Mm-hm. Yep. That's what 'no' typically means, unless it's Daisy saying that she didn't steal my lunch as I stare at her eating my lunch," Fitz replied indifferently, turning back to his food to get another bite of pie, and hoping that Malfoy got around to telling them what a wizard's duel was before they all grew too old to actually do one.

Which after more surprised staring, he finally did with even more sneering than before. "It's where two wizards cast spells at each other trying to kill the other person. And each wizard has a second who takes over if their wizard dies."

"Fascinating," Fitz replied boredly, though he was actually quite interested in the concept, even if he highly doubted that most wizard's duels were actually to the death, and certain that any one that Malfoy might get himself into against another student certainly wouldn't be.

"So you going to fight me, now that you know what's on the line, Potter?" Malfoy sneered.

"No."

Like every other time Fitz had spoken that entire conversation, Malfoy stared at him in shock and disbelief. Never would he have expected such a short, blunt answer. Neither would he have ever expected whatever answer Potter gave him to be of the negative variety, instead of the positive. Of course the boy-hero would want to fight his mortal enemy and prove that he was better, the savior of the wizarding world, right?

But after a second, he managed to sneer, "Still too scared?"

"Not interested," Fitz shrugged boredly, debating whether to get another piece of pie or not.

"I think you're just a giant scaredy-cat," Malfoy sneered.

"Think whatever you like, our fucks have runneth dry," Fitz replied. Deciding that he really ought to be done eating, and certain that he was done with the conversation, he stood up and held his hand out to his wife. "Ready to go, love?"

And with that the two of them walked out of the Great Hall, leaving Malfoy behind staring at their disappearing backs and the complete annihilation of his fool-proof plan to get Potter expelled for sneaking around the castle in the middle of the night.

~FS~

The following evening at supper, a Gryffindor seventh year delivered FitzSimmons a note from McGonagall telling them that they were expected in her office at 20:00 that evening for their detention.

So at 20:01 that evening, Simmons closed the book that she was reading in their dorm room and pounced on her husband who was lying on their bed, snogging him senseless.

"Not that I didn't enjoy it, but what was that for, Jemma?" Fitz asked in confusion when they finally broke apart, one hand idly stroking her back as she lay on top of him.

"The time when we were supposed to be in McGonagall's office for me unsuccessfully trying to talk some sense into her just passed with us not there, so it seemed like as good a reason as any to kiss my husband," Simmons answered. "Although, technically the detention was only given to me, not you, and Malfoy obviously still hasn't been appropriately punished for either of his crime sprees yesterday, so maybe I acted in haste."

"No, no, I don't think you were hasty at all!" Fitz exclaimed. "It was a perfectly well thought out reason to snog me!"

Simmons rolled her eyes. "I don't know what you think you're trying to get, we kiss all the time, have sex most nights and numerous mornings, and you know you're perfectly welcome to pounce on me and kiss me senseless at any time so long as I'm not completely focused on reading — then you have to just pepper my neck with kisses until I tell you to stop it until I finish whatever chapter I'm on, and then you can kiss me senseless. Or, you know, we're somewhere like class, or the lab or a meeting or mission back home, when it's inappropriate to snog. But you don't have to try to convince me that I wasn't hasty in my reason for pouncing you — anyway, that was the excuse, not the reason."

"Oh? And the reason was?" Fitz asked smugly.

"I was starting to get bogged down, and needed something to reboot my mind so that I could study more efficiently. Got any ideas in that brilliant brain of yours, husband?" Simmons replied with a smirk of her own.

"Only ones that involve you with substantially fewer clothes than you're currently wearing," Fitz answered.

"Then I best be getting naked, I guess," smirked Simmons.

As Simmons dropped down onto her husband's cock a few minutes later, Professor McGonagall was having a much less pleasant evening than the biochemist, or the engineer. The first year muggleborn still hadn't shown up for her detention, and it was already ten minutes after she was supposed to be there, which in Professor McGonagall's half a century of teaching experience meant that the girl wasn't coming at all. And it was always a problem when a student tried to shirk their punishments, but even more so in this particular case, because she wasn't sure what options she actually had. Normally she would threaten a student with expulsion — it was the go-to threat of all of the professors and twice for Severus — and she was probably still going to end up having to try it, but in all of her years as a professor she could count on one hand the number of students who had actually ever been expelled, and in this particular case, the likelihood of being able to expel the young muggleborn even if she really wanted to seemed less likely than normal. For beyond the fact that the girl had already shown in just two weeks an unnaturally quick ability to pick up spells and remember information, and had outside of this one incident been an absolute model student, in all of McGonagall's time watching the girl during those two weeks she had never once seen the muggleborn anywhere that wasn't at the side of Harry Potter. Who pretty much couldn't be expelled if he straight up murdered someone (probably Malfoy, they seemed to have a pretty big beef already), Dumbledore's direct orders, part of some master plan that he wasn't divulging to any of them but had started the day that she'd watched him leave the poor, innocent orphan on the doorstep of the abusive muggle scum in the middle of the night.

Which on one hand might actually make it easier to threaten the girl with expulsion, as Harry wouldn't want her to leave him and she wouldn't want to leave Potter, but on the other hand, they had both already shown a stubborn steak that was being exemplified right at that moment with Granger not attending her assigned detention, and if Potter threatened to quit if Granger was expelled, McGonagall was royally screwed, as Potter could not be allowed to leave under any circumstances whatsoever. Sure, it was an unheard of situation for a student to threaten to quit, but if anyone was to do it, they might be the ones, and if they successfully called her bluff, she lost all power over them forever as they would figure out that Potter was completely unexpellable. And she could take more points away from them, but they already held the castle record for the most points ever lost in the first two weeks of school at a nice, round 200 after the ten that she had taken away that morning for still refusing to wear their robes, and they clearly didn't care about points or the House Cup. In fact, thanks to them, Gryffindor hadn't had more than thirty rubies in their hourglass at any point since the start of term, and while the rest of Gryffindor was quite pissed off about that and Gryffindor's nearly zero percent chance of winning the House Cup that year after just two weeks of school, Potter and Granger hadn't shown the slightest bit of concern about the matter as they continued willfully losing their House more points every day. Not that they were wrong, as Hogwarts was where everything was made up and the points meant nothing, but it did make her completely powerless against them.

But there was nothing that she could do about it at the moment, so these were all problems for the McGonagall of the following morning to deal with.

~FS~

Saturday morning FitzSimmons awoke at their normal hour, but as they had no classes to get to and they didn't need to map out Saturday's castle layout this week, they weren't in any rush, which meant sex — lots of sex.

In fact, by the time they finally got dressed and headed down to breakfast Simmons had lost count of how many times she had orgasmed, and anyway, too many of them had ran on top of each other to accurately count, besides the fact that by the end she was too blissed out to be counting anyway. And Fitz had come three or four times himself, which was really the better testament to how long they had spent loving on each other, as after several years of marriage and dating before that Fitz had become very skilled at making her orgasm repeatedly in a short amount of time, whereas he was still constrained by the normal limits of being male. But despite this, when they arrived at the Great Hall to eat it still wasn't particularly full, everyone else sleeping in in the much more conventional G-rated version, as opposed to the NC-17 version that FitzSimmons had.

It did however mean that Professor McGonagall was already there, lying in wait, and they hadn't even made it to their seats before she stood up and started striding towards them.

"My office, Granger!" she snapped as soon as she made it up to where they had just sat down to start eating.

FitzSimmons immediately stood back up, idly wondering how long it was going to be before they would get to eat, and whether their stomachs growling would make Professor McGonagall hurry along her scolding or drag it out even longer as additional punishment.

But as soon as she saw Fitz standing up as well, McGonagall snapped, "Potter, stay. This only concerns Granger."

"No."

"Excuse me?!" McGonagall exclaimed in shock.

"He said no, Ma'am. No means no," Simmons replied coldly. "He comes with me, or we don't go at all. That is final."

"You don't tell me what is final, young woman!" McGonagall screamed.

"Okay then," Simmons shrugged, and she and Fitz sat back down again and began dishing out eggs and sausages onto their plates.

By this point, after McGonagall's shrieking, every head in the hall was facing them, watching the most exciting thing to have ever happened in the school for most of them — no one had ever told a teacher no before and backed it up, not even Death Eaters' children.

"If you don't start obeying right this minute —!"

"You'll what, give us detention?" Fitz interrupted contemptuously. "Already tried that, remember? It's why we're here right now. Just accept that I'm coming, and let's get this over with."

"I can expel you, Potter!" McGonagall snarled.

"Then do it," Fitz replied indifferently. "Else cut the bullshit and we'll all head up to your office."

FitzSimmons were surprised that they weren't seeing literal steam coming out of McGonagall's ears by this point, but there was plenty of metaphorical smoke to make up for it.

But she noticeably immediately dropped the topic of expulsion, growling out instead, "My office, now."

And when FitzSimmons stood up together again, she said nothing about it this time, simply leading them out of the Great Hall and up to her office. Once inside, she sat down in her chair behind the desk as FitzSimmons took one of the three chairs in front of her desk, Simmons sitting not particularly platonically in Fitz's lap, to further reinforce the fact that they were doing nothing without the other.

McGonagall noticeably faltered for a second when she saw how the two first-years were sitting, but she quickly collected herself and demanded at Simmons, "Where were you last night, Granger?"

"In my dorm room," Simmons answered, seeing no reason to say what she was doing in her dorm room, the amount of clothing she may or may not have had on at the time, or that it wasn't the dorm room that Professor McGonagall thought it was.

"I gave you detention!"

"Which we didn't deserve," Simmons replied calmly. "And the correct response to any unconstitutional law — or in this case wrongful detention — is civil disobedience."

"What do you mean you didn't deserve it?!" McGonagall exclaimed, having completely tuned out everything Simmons had said after 'we didn't deserve'. "You talked back to a professor — to me!"

"And that is where you are factually wrong, hence the reason we didn't deserve it," Simmons replied. "I questioned the fact that you didn't punish a student you caught with a stolen article in their possession, and explained to you why your actions would only lead to an increase in theft in this school and likely a decrease in the reporting of thefts, along with any other type of crime. A claim that in fact came true that very afternoon when the thief in question stole the exact same object for the second time and stored it away in the top of the giant oak near where we had flying class — or did you never hear that from Madam Hooch? But my point is, exactly what I told you would happen as a consequence of your lack of doing your job as a person in the position of enforcing both the school rules and the actual laws of this country — since it is inside a school so there are no police officers here to do it like in the real world — happened exactly like I told you it would. And yes, I said it with righteous anger. No, I am not apologizing, because no, I was not wrong to express the truth in righteous anger. You simply didn't like the fact that I was telling you that you didn't do your job, and unable to contradict me and unwilling to do your job, you gave me a bullshit punishment while letting the thief literally walk free to go commit the exact same crime again in under six hours."

"Malfoy returned Longbottom's thing!" McGonagall exclaimed.

"Doesn't change the fact that he stole it in the first place, or that he still should have been punished even if he did return what he stole after he got caught," Simmons replied.

"That is irrelevant," McGonagall snapped, immediately changing subjects as soon as she was defeated once again. "You are here because you did not attend the detention a professor, namely myself, had every right to give you. But since you mistakenly thought that you didn't deserve it, this one time I will allow you to serve it tonight instead with no additional punishment like I would normally give for missing a detention."

"No," Simmons answered bluntly.

McGonagall stared at her in shock for a second at such a blunt refusal, despite how many blunt refusals they had already given her in the Great Hall that morning before they ever made it here, before saying, "I can expel you, you know, Granger, for refusing to obey a professor's orders."

Simmons immediately stood up and Fitz right after her, and she said practically cheerfully, "Okay, we'll go pack."

"No! I wasn't actually expelling you, Granger, I was simply warning you that I can!" McGonagall exclaimed hurriedly.

"No, you can't," Simmons replied bluntly. "Madam Hooch told us if we didn't leave the brooms alone, we would be out of the school before we could say quidditch, but when she literally caught Malfoy in the air upon her return, she did nothing more than revoke his flying privileges in class for two weeks and take away ten points. You can't expel us."

She had no actual clue whether McGonagall could kick them out or not, and all things considered figured that she probably did as a Head of House, else she didn't know whom that capability would lie with unless it was only the headmaster, but that was all irrelevant. She was quite confident that McGonagall couldn't kick them out over anything that they had done so far, and wanted to prove that point right then and there. But more importantly, she really didn't care if they were kicked out — they could learn magic on their own just fine, and surviving was something that they quite literally had done repeatedly since joining the BUS a decade before. She was a bit worried about the fact that everyone here saw them as eleven year olds, but they had only ever been around people who in theory at least knew who they were, so who knew what would happen when they got out to real people who had no preconceived notions of who they were or what age they were supposed to be. And there was always the possibility that the 0-8-4 only worked as long as FitzSimmons were inside the construct of the school (of which the train was part of), and as soon as they got out of the range of the school, into the normal parts of Britain, the 0-8-4 would pull them back to their world or they would wake up and find out that it had all been a Framework-like dream, just without the psychopathic robot with anger management issues. But whatever the case was, she was quite confident that they could survive on their own in the zero chance that McGonagall actually let them leave.

At being bluntly called out, McGonagall momentarily lost her head.

"You don't think I can?!" she yelled, jumping up from her chair in a towering rage. "Granger, you're expelled! Go pack your trunk and be back in the entrance hall in thirty minutes!"

She hadn't in the least bit meant to actually tell Granger that she was expelled and see what happened when she did, but in her anger she forgot all about the fact that she needed to carefully maintain and protect the bluff, and not give them a chance to actually call her out on it. Which they immediately did.

"Yes, Ma'am," FitzSimmons answered together, before starting towards the door.

"Not you, Potter. You're not expelled," McGonagall replied sternly.

"We have a rule — we never leave each other's side," Fitz answered. "I'm happy to quit school for her. I still haven't forgiven you for not punishing Malfoy when he stole Neville's ball Thursday morning, that led to this moment. And now that we're free, maybe we'll hop across the pond and see if an American magic school is accepting applications — they're probably better than here, anyway."

"Absolutely not, Potter!" McGonagall growled. "You are not allowed to leave this school!"

"The hell he isn't!" Simmons exclaimed, whipping her wand out of her pocket and pointing it at McGonagall's heart. "That would be kidnapping. You are a private school we are paying to attend, we can bloody well leave and take our business elsewhere, somewhere better, if we like! Which we are. You started this whole thing, and we're done!"

And with that she strode out of the room, Fitz right behind her. Neither of them said a thing the whole way back up to Gryffindor Tower, and soon they were walking into their private, secret dorm.

"Are we actually leaving?" Fitz asked as he watched Simmons walk over to their trunks.

"I sincerely doubt it," she answered truthfully. "But we're definitely about to find out."

Fitz moved over to help her pack, but as Simmons had kept their trunks in immaculate order she was already closing them shut by the time he made it across the room to her. So instead he simply took the trunk that she handed him. As they walked back through the Gryffindor common room they received a few odd stares from the handful of people in there, but they payed them no attention and were soon back out into the main castle. And a few minutes later they walked into the entrance hall where they found McGonagall standing waiting for them.

"This is your last chance, Granger," she said. "You can still stay here if you just agree to serve your detention."

"No, this is your last chance," Simmons answered coldly. "You need us — we don't need you."

"Then this is goodbye," McGonagall said.

"Are you walking us out, or are we free to go?" Fitz asked.

"I have to open the gates," McGonagall answered, before striding over to the great oak door and opening it.

FitzSimmons followed her out onto the grounds where they linked hands and began almost skipping merrily down the road that led to the gates, happily chatting away about cuttlefish, chromatophores, and a pet project that Simmons wanted to start working on in the lab whenever they eventually got back to their own world. McGonagall, meanwhile, stalked behind them growing more and more agitated and worried with every step and skip, as if they made it all the way to the gate and the pair looked at her expectantly to open it and let them out, she was going to have to break down and admit that it was all a bluff, and that they weren't actually allowed to leave. Unfortunately for her, the two first-years in front of her never broke stride and soon they did arrive at the dreaded gate, where FitzSimmons sure enough turned and looked at her expectantly.

McGonagall ground her teeth for a second, before finally shouting, "No! You're not actually expelled! Now get back up to the school, both of you!"

"Told you that you couldn't actually kick us out," Simmons said coolly as she turned around and started back towards the school. "We're not idiots. No school in the world could survive the lawsuit of expelling a student for refusing to serve a detention, even if the detention was rightfully given, unlike in this particular case. Now, I'm not saying whether that is right or wrong, I'm simply stating the fact that no school would ever win that case or the public backlash surrounding it. Therefore no school is willing to try it, even this one. And to be honest, I was actually quite surprised with how far you carried out the bluff. I actually have to give you respect for that, most people would have bailed long before now."

McGonagall wasn't sure whether she was supposed to take this as a compliment or not, and anyway it still meant that she had lost, so she said nothing to that and instead looked at Fitz and asked, "Potter, you didn't actually want to go back to your relatives, did you?"

"No, but I also wasn't going to," Fitz replied, having no clue who Harry's relatives were or why a professor would think that he wouldn't want to go home to them while simultaneously seemingly doing absolutely nothing about said home situation whatever it might be, and adding it to the list of things that they needed to learn. "We weren't going to go to either of our families. But we're certainly not telling you what our plans were."

Professor McGonagall didn't say anything else for the remainder of the walk back to the castle, so FitzSimmons soon resumed their discussion about Simmons' cuttlefish project to pass the time. Once back in the entrance hall the three of them parted ways without a word, Professor McGonagall heading back towards her office to wallow in misery at losing the battle of wills and curse Dumbledore's stupid order that they couldn't expel Potter, while FitzSimmons headed up the Grand Staircase towards Gryffindor Tower to return their trunks to their room before heading back down to breakfast to finally eat, and eventually outside to enjoy the remainder of their Saturday.

And from that day forward Professor McGonagall stopped taking away ten points from Gryffindor every morning when she saw the pair still not wearing their robes, having finally accepted that they really didn't care and nothing in the world was going to make them wear their robes.